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Tucker Carlson fired! Probably as a result of the Dominion lawsuit….it would be delicious if it was required as part of the settlement but is good news anyway…for anyone hoping for the survival of American democracy. The reality may well be that he was fired not for lying on-air but for writing privately accusing management of being liberal (!) and incompetent. Lesson, if so, don’t bite the hand that feeds you. Kama is great…the lying asshole who was a big complainer about left-wing cancel culture is now a victim of right wing cancel culture.

That's not quite what Cohen wrote (maybe he elaborated on it in later books). The way he phrased it in his first book is: (Box and bold in original text) In summary, he says you should bid 3 over 2 but not 3 over 3 with 16 total trumps. He has tables and everything to back up his thesis, but you're right that his approach doesn't quite work when you're vulnerable and they're trigger-happy. As for what the robots are doing, you're much better placed to answer that. But according to the description, it kind of looks like they were following Cohen's guidelines for once.

Just had a thought; I guess over 1♥ you can construct an approach where 2♣ and 2♦ are natural 5+ GF. If you play Kaplan Inversion then 1♥-1♠ artificial F1 --1NT Balanced or Diamonds; 2♣ asks? --2♣ natural --2♦ 4♠ --2♥ 6+♥ --2♠ usually artificial Responder may then GF via 2♠, invite via 2NT, sign-off with a long weak minor, sign-off in 3NT When responder is 5+♠ GF opener should be in a position to show a ♠ count over 2♠ so the ♠ contract is achieved. 1♥-1NT is 5+♠ Weak

Ignoring the actual hand for a second (I'm not familiar with GIB but this looks like a value bid, not a LAW-based bid, compatible with smerriman's explanation), Cohen introduces the "bid to the level of your total number of trumps" as a shortcut for "bid 3 over 2 with 16 total trumps, but not 3 over 3". The idea is that, conditional on us having an 8 card fit, the opponents are unlikely to have a 10 card fit or longer (if they have a 10 card fit that's 10 out of their 26 cards spoken for, and the other 15 have to break 5-5-6 to give us 'only' an 8 card fit, in which event we even have a double fit). Conversely, it is possible but unlikely the opponents only have a 7 card fit (our other 18 cards have to split 6-6-6). So with exactly an 8 card fit, assume the number of total trumps is 16 or 17, and act accordingly. Similar logic can be applied to a 9 card fit, but it gets less accurate with 10 card fits or longer. To the best of my knowledge the statement of the LAW is that the total number of tricks (defined as the number of tricks NS can make in their optimal trump suit plus the number EW can take in their optimal trump suit - neither of which need be the longest trump suit) is (often) equal to the number of trumps (longest trump suit of NS + longest trump suit of EW). All rules on bidding X over Y, or bidding to level Z, are derived from this in combination with bridge score tables and some statistics, along with adjustments to make the law more accurate.